Monthly Archives: August 2012
THE NUS, UCU and Unison yesterday condemned the Home Office attack on London Metropolitan University and its international students, and demanded that not a single student be deported. London Met Vice-Chancellor Malcolm Gillies said in a statement: ‘The University regrets to announce that as at 8pm on Wednesday 29th August...
AT least 38 people still on death row in The Gambia are at imminent risk of execution following official confirmation that nine other death row inmates were put to death last week. Amnesty International issued the warning on Wednesday as the government pledged that executions will continue. ‘One can only imagine...
HEALTH bosses have recommended that St Helier Hospital lose its A&E and maternity departments. At a meeting on Wednesday afternoon, the programme board of the Better Services Better Value review put forward their preferred model for the future shape of health services in south west London. They recommended St Helier Hospital...
PLATINUM miners arrested at South Africa’s Marikana mine were yesterday charged with the murder of 34 colleagues shot by police. The police shootings sparked a national outcry. Earlier yesterday, National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesman Frank Lesenyego said that police have not been charged because a commission of inquiry would investigate...
PRESIDENT MURSI caused a Syrian walk-out at the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Tehran yesterday when he attacked the Syrian government and supported the US-UK-France drive to overthrow it, calling it a revolution, and comparing it to the Palestinian revolution. Mursi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood,...
UNEMPLOYED youth will be forced to work unpaid for three months before they can claim benefits under plans announced by London Mayor Johnson and Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) Secretary Grayling. Under the pilot scheme announced on Tuesday, 6,000 Londoners aged 18-24 will have to do 13 weeks of...
THE European Central Bank has reported that outflows from the Spanish banks reached 74bn euros (£59bn) in the month of July, twice the previous monthly record. This means that Spain is rapidly following Greece over the edge of the abyss and down the plug-hole, dragging the rest...
new figures show there has been a massive 33% rise in court orders to evict private tenants over the past two years. Housing charity Crisis analysed Ministry of Justice statistics to reveal that in the last year 36,211 landlords have been granted a court order to evict their tenants, up...
DISABLED people, benefit claimants and supporters held a vigil and remembrance event yesterday for those who have died because of the actions of Paralympic sponsor Atos. The event took place outside the company’s UK Head Office in Triton Square, Euston on the same day as the opening of the Paralympic...
‘HIT SQUADS’ are being sent by the government into hospitals to identify and implement savage cuts, ‘savings’ and closures so that spiralling PFI debts can continue to be paid, the Department of Health confirmed to News Line yesterday. The ministry said the team will initially target seven trusts identified as...
CONTROVERSIAL India-based mining company Vedanta was again the subject of an angry protest in London yesterday. London Mining Network, Amnesty International, Survival International and other campaign groups attended and protested outside the Vedanta AGM to raise numerous concerns about the impact of the company and its subsidiaries around the world. The...
THE decision of an Israeli court to reject that the Israeli army and state were in any way responsible for the 2003 Israeli army murder by bulldozer of American peace activist Rachel Corrie, is yet another reminder of the complete ruthlessness of the Zionist state. After all, its architects...
FOLLOWING the GCSE results fiasco, the National Union of Teachers is demanding the regrading of all results. Kevin Courtney, Deputy General Secretary of the NUT, said yesterday: ‘The only immediate way of putting right the injustice faced by so many students, teachers and schools is that this summer’s exams should...
MINERS at Eastern Platinum (Eastplats) in South Africa came out on strike yesterday, alongside the striking Marikana miners, in a sign that the strike in South Africa’s platinum belt is spreading. Eastplats operations are near the Marikana site, run by world’s third largest producer, Lonmin, where 34 miners were shot...
THE Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) has released a statistical review on the status of Palestinian youth that shows youth pay a heavy price of occupation. Youth comprises one third of Palestinian Society. The estimated population in the Palestinian Territory totalled 4.29 million in mid-2012 (50.8% male and 49.2% female)...
TOP members of South Africa’s ruling ANC party met yesterday to discuss the political crisis that has emerged in the wake of the ANC’s police force shooting dead 34 striking Marikana platinum miners on 16 August. Hundreds were wounded in the course of the police massacre, and eight miners were...
HEALTH unions, Unison, the BMA, and RCN have refused to recognise a South West regional NHS cartel set up to cut pay and conditions. The unions announced on Friday that they will not recognise the South West Pay, Terms and Conditions Consortium (SWC), which is comprised of bosses from 20...
A SHRINE in the Libyan capital Tripoli venerating a Sufi Muslim saint has been destroyed – the latest in a series of outrages by al-Qaeda militants, this time armed with huge bulldozers to destroy a religious site that is a very holy place to a large number of Libyan...
Statement by the Revolutionary Marxist League Greek Section of the International Committee of the Fourth International The only road for all workers is to build the new revolutionary leadership and organise the indefinite political general strike to get rid of the coalition government of the EC-IMF-ECB! THE 9-month-old steel workers’...
ON the eve of International Youth Day, the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) released a statistical review on the status of Palestinian youth, that shows youth pay a heavy price for occupation. Youth represent 29.8% of the total population: 40.2% of them are adolescents and 60.4% are youth. The...
SYRIAN deputy Premier Qadri Jamil, and Syrian Minister of State for National Reconciliation Affairs Ali Haydar have spoken on Damascus TV following their meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Jamil said: ‘The Syrian government delegation’s visit to Moscow – as you can see from the makeup of this...
THE new axis of evil, the leaders of the US, France and the UK, have come together to threaten Syria with war, with US army units assembled close to Syria’s borders in the wake of the recent military exercises in Jordan, in which US, British, French, Jordanian and Saudi...
‘IT’S the last chance – the Greek people need to know this.’ That was the threat of Eurogroup bully-boy President Jean Claude Juncker to the Greek people yesterday. They must pay for the bosses’ and bankers’ crisis or else be thrown out of the EU and the eurozone. This was his message...
HUNDREDS of state-run schools in England are facing closure as a direct result of the Tory-led coalition’s war against free state education, it emerged on Wednesday night. Changes to the marking system for GCSE's – changes insisted upon by the right-wing Tory Education Minister Michael Gove – have meant that this...
EUROGROUP President Jean-Claude Juncker is in Athens for talks with Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on whether the debt-laden country has the will to push through unpopular reforms. Samaras is under pressure to convince European leaders that Greece has finally mustered the political courage to fulfill pledges under its...
THE GREEK BOURGEOISIE is now pleading for more time to repay its massive loans. The unelected Prime Minister, Samaras, who was selected for the job by the EU and the IMF, has urged that a little ‘room to breathe’ on achieving the quarterly targets must be granted...
A 400 strong packed meeting at Lambeth Town Hall on Tuesday night commemorated the fourth anniversary of the death of Sean Rigg in Brixton Police Station. Chairing the meeting, Matilda MacAttrum, of Black Mental Health UK, said: ‘This meeting is about mental health and policing. It’s time to change. It’s...
MORE South African platinum miners came out on strike yesterday at the Royal Bafokeng Platinum mine outside Rustenburg, in the North West. They gathered at the main entrance of the mine’s shaft, on strike in support of their demand for a wage increase. Their colleagues at the Marikana platinum mine...
UK-OWNED platinum mining giant Lonmin (the world’s third largest platinum producer) has been forced by the strength and defiance of the miners, supported by the entire South African working class, to withdraw its sack threat. The brutal Lonmin bosses thought that after the massacre of 44 miners they could impose...
THE Fire Brigades Union (FBU) accused the London Fire Brigade and the Fire Authority of incompetence and having ‘handed over control of the fire service to hedge fund managers’. The FBU are demanding the emergency service ‘must be brought back into public ownership under direct local authority control’. The union condemned...
STRIKING platinum miners at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in South Africa defied the company’s sack threats yesterday and refused to return to work. The 3,000 striking rock-drillers were told by Lonmin, owner of the platinum mine in Marikana in North West province, to return or be sacked. The rock-drill operators, who have...
The massacre of 34 striking miners at the hands of the ANC government’s police last Thursday marked a decisive point in the development of the South African revolution. Despite all the phony tears from ANC president Jacob Zuma, who has announced a week of national mourning for the dead, it...
GREEK Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is holding meetings with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande this week, in a bid to negotiate the release of 31.5bn euros in bailout loans next month. The round of meetings began yesterday with Greece’s foreign minister Dimitris Avramopoulos being interviewed...
LABOUR’S last Chancellor, Alistair Darling, has urged the Tories to set about printing or borrowing even more money to finance growth. It must be remembered that Darling, Brown and Blair were the leaders who sold off 60% of the country’s gold reserves (400 tonnes between 1999 and 2002) at a...
THE head of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, yesterday afternoon thanked supporters for ‘turning out in the middle of the night’ when ‘police were storming up the internal fire escape’ on Thursday. ‘The world was watching because you were here,’ he said, adding his thanks to ‘A courageous Latin American nation who...
SOUTH African platinum miners were yesterday continuing their strike, and their wives are occupying the entrance to the British-owned Lonmin Marikana mine. Lonmin has given striking workers a final ultimatum to end their strike by today or face being sacked. ‘The final ultimatum provides RDOs (rock drill operators) with a last...
ECUADOR has granted asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange because it believes he will be politically persecuted if extradited, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño announced on Thursday. The UK, meanwhile, has said it is disappointed by the decision and will not grant safe passage out of the country to Assange,...
SOUTH AFRICAN workers have been shocked by the ANC government’s police force shooting dead over 30 miners at the Lonmin UK-owned platinum mine. Fifty two years after the Sharpeville massacre by the apartheid police force in 1960, workers thought that they would never see such a day again. However, it...
HOUSING charity Shelter yesterday described the rental market as ‘out of control’ as letting group LSL revealed the average rent paid by private tenants in England and Wales reached a new record high in July, of £725 a month. LSL said rents were rising fastest in London and the South...
ECUADOR yesterday granted political asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and called on the UK to ‘guarantee safe passage to Mr Assange to complete his asylum’. Announcing the decision of Equador’s President, Rafeal Correa, at a news conference in Quito, foreign minister Ricardo Patino said this followed the failure to...